About dark and light

[cspindley]

Hi just a quick question. What do people mean when they say 20 darks and 10 lights. I'm new to imaging so just wanted to know what that's all about and when people look at thing like m14 how do they get all that colour around the star

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[Cornelius Varley]

Dark = exposure with lens cap on of equal exposure to a light , only recording the cameras noise.

Light = exposure of subject, recording light.

The dark frames can then be subtracted from the light frames to reduce noise.

Peter

[cspindley]

Thanks Peter still went over my head lol I'm using a Skymax 127 so this does not have a lens cap. I use sharpcap and registax 6

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[hemihaggis]

you should have a lens cover for the mak ??

im just guessing but your mount will be an alt/az ??

[cspindley]

Just a black cap with no hole in

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[Spikey]

Just a black cap with no hole in

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Sounds like a lens cap to me. You mention sharpcap and registax, so you are planetary imaging, yes ?

You don't need darks or lights for that matter, they only relate to deep sky long exposures. An AZ mount and a 127 Mak being a bit slow are not ideally suited to DSO long exposure photography.

If you want to get into DSO photography this forum is a good start for advice etc.. and many people will recommend Steve Richard's book Making every phon count - helped me an enormous amount.

[Tinker1947]

If you download Deep Sky Stacker, there's a good help file explains most of the things you need to know....

DeepSkyStacker - Free

[cspindley]

Hi I can get deep sky images fine no problem just wanted to know how they got there picture so good

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[jfox61]

Or alternatively, do as I was advised from the guys on here. Buy Making every Photon count by Steve Richards. Will talk any newcomer to the hobby through without overloading you with techincal bumpf.

[hemihaggis]

Hi I can get deep sky images fine no problem just wanted to know how they got there picture so good

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not with an alt az you cant ...sorry ....